Cognitive and linguistic skills in Swedish children with cochlear implants - measures of accuracy and latency as indicators of development

• Published in: Scandinavian journal of psychology Vol. 49; no. 6; pp. 559 - 576
• Main Authors: WASS, MALIN, IBERTSSON, TINA, LYXELL, BJÖRN, SAHLÉN, BIRGITTA, HÄLLGREN, MATHIAS, LARSBY, BIRGITTA, MÄKI-TORKKO, ELINA
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford, UK Blackwell Publishing Ltd 01.12.2008
• Subjects: Adolescent; Child; Child, Preschool; Children with CI; Cochlear Implants; Deafness; Education, Special; Engineering Psychology; Female; Humans; Language Development Disorders - diagnosis; Language Development Disorders - psychology; Learning Disorders - diagnosis; Learning Disorders - psychology; lexical access; Mainstreaming (Education); Male; Memory, Short-Term; Neuropsychological Tests - statistics & numerical data; Phonetics; phonological skills; Psychology; Psychometrics; Psykologi; Reaction Time; Reading; Rehabilitation - psychology; Retention (Psychology); Samhällsvetenskap; Social Sciences; Sweden; Teknisk psykologi; Verbal Learning; Vocabulary; working memory; Sweden
• ISSN: 0036-5564; 1467-9450; 1467-9450
• DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9450.2008.00680.x

The purpose of the present study was to examine working memory (WM) capacity, lexical access and phonological skills in 19 children with cochlear implants (CI) (5;7–13;4 years of age) attending grades 0–2, 4, 5 and 6 and to compare their performance with 56 children with normal hearing. Their performance was also studied in relation to demographic factors. The findings indicate that children with CI had visuospatial WM capacities equivalent to the comparison group. They had lower performance levels on most of the other cognitive tests. Significant differences between the groups were not found in all grades and a number of children with CI performed within 1 SD of the mean of their respective grade‐matched comparison group on most of the cognitive measures. The differences between the groups were particularly prominent in tasks of phonological WM. The results are discussed with respect to the effects of cochlear implants on cognitive development.